


Durin's Beard

by Lasgalendil



Series: Starlight and Song [18]
Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Beards (Facial Hair), Dwarf/Elf Relationship(s), Hair Brushing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-10-02
Packaged: 2018-04-19 21:01:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4760867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasgalendil/pseuds/Lasgalendil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elf loves Dwarf.<br/>Dwarf loves Elf.</p><p>...Elf loves hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

My love is a Dwarf—a Dwarf!

[They say they feel sorry for me.]  
[They ought to be envious!]

A Dwarf! Ai, Óli! Such hair! So much of it! It is thick and course yet fine and soft, like the woolly coat of a sheep, rich red, bright silver, tawny brown, dappled in the sunlight like the coat of a dew-stained deer.

[I am an Elf.]  
[Yet I have not words!]

Hair, hair! Such wonderful, wonderful hair! It falls from his forehead and nape, his jaw, his ears! It trails from his nose, his eyes, his lips, his cheeks! It trickles down his throat, his neck, his back! It is thick and springy like moss in springtime on the forest floor—I can lose my fingers, my hands, my lips in it for hours, days, an eternity and yet it would never be enough. And to comb—oh! to comb!—it is a delight! A joy! A thrill! It is tangled and matted from curls and dust, frizzled by damp and sweat, knotted by his hasty attempts at braids by his forge, battered by wind and rain and sun alike! It is always dirty, always messy, tireless and anxious and begging to be combed! I may spend hours, hours combing him—smoothing, pressing, shaping, caressing—and yet in the morning must comb both beard and head anew.

It is no task. No chore. Not to comb someone so beautiful.

[With such beautiful hair!]

“Use a comb, Elf,” he has told me. “Quicker.”

“Leave it, you stupid, fucking Elf. It’s hopeless. You try to make a Longbeard’s plait as neat as your own and you’ll be at it ’til the World is new.”

“Mahal-damnit it, Elf! Will you leave it bloody alone already!”

…No. No I will not. Use this—this ridiculous piece of wood? to comb him? My Gimli? My Dwarf? With his rich red hair and hot skin and taut muscles? I think not! Why would I use this—this comb!—to do with less skill what my own fingers can? Give up the sensation of touching my Dwarf? No! Leave it? Leave his hair a tangled mess? Let him walk around Uncombed so that others may see and believe him unloved, alone, shamed? No! May it not be! I will comb him. Day and night and every hour of every day I will comb him. He is my Dwarf, my husband, my Comb-mate. I live that he may be so adorned! Leave it alone? No. No, the only time you may be Uncombed, my Love, is when you are loving me.

[And then while you sleep I will comb you anew.]  
[At first I thought your sleep to be strange—now it is not so!]  
[So many, many hours I may love you!]

I wish—I wish you would comb me. But I know you are busy. You are a Dwarf. You do—Dwarvly? Dwarvenly? things. I do not understand. I do not know why. I do not know why you must leave me and go away to meetings and councils and over-seeings and eat dinner with merchants and talk of wine and silks and spices and gold while your eyes say you would rather be fucking me. I don’t know why your books and your inkwells. I have tried to learn your strange markings and what they mean but I am distracted. I am an Elf. I am torn between you and the sea. I know one day I will leave you—or you will leave me. You will return to your halls of stone where I cannot follow, or the Sea will swallow me and I will fade.

I will forget, my Love. One day soon I will forget.

Forget you. Forget everything but the song of gulls and the whisper of waves on the shore. They may take your name, your face, your memory from me, but they cannot take this: while you lived, while I yet knew and loved you, you were Combed.

[And well.]


	2. Chapter 2

Mahal-damnit.

My beard, I believe, is falling out.

[Or rather, being pulled.]

Bloody, fucking Elf. Combing. Always combing. Stupid, sodding, singing Elf is a bloody pain in my arse. Who has ever heard of a Longbeard—a Firebeard!—without a Mahal-damned beard?

…still. The fucking is well worth it.


	3. Chapter 3

…rounded ears.

Ai, Elbereth! Rounded ears! There is no point, no tip, no lobe, nothing to kiss or suck or bite against!

[My poor Dwarf!]

I have tried—Oh, I have tried!—to show him the delight have having one’s ears touched, stroked, kissed, nibbled, tickled, but he will have none of it. And I wonder—he is cut, he is pierced, he is inked in so many other places—was he cut here, as well? Does it—could it—stop him from feeling?

…from loving?

[Is this _why?_ ]

Was he—are all Dwarves—born this way? Were they made this way? Did Óli form them, create them, but not know the joy, the wonder, the delight that is Comb-mates? The feel of a parent’s, a friend’s, a lover’s touch against one’s ears? A husband’s (well, wife’s?) breath against lobe and tip alike?

[Could Ivonn be so cruel?]

But no, no I must say to myself. He is a Dwarf, this is how he is, and if Ivonn and Óli can love, then so can we.

[So can I.]

I will…I will have to try harder to reach him. I—I will comb him. Always comb him. Every night while he sleeps that he may wake and know he is loved. I will kiss him, lick lobe and tip, trace tongue against the side of his strange ears to where they meet his neck, his face, his very beard!

Perhaps my love you do not feel as I do. You are a Dwarf. Perhaps you are different. But I am an Elf

[You knew this, when you married me.]

and I love you, as an Elf ought, as an Elf must. I know no other way. So I will love you as I am able: with hands and teeth, lips and tongue. Oh, I know I am clumsy. I am unskilled. I am not like the lovers you had before who knew how to please a Dwarf, how to, to ‘fuck’ you (or be fucked by you). In this matter—and many others—I know I am a poor teacher, my love.

[My poor love!]

…yet still I would have you learn.


	4. Chapter 4

Bloody. Fucking. Elf.

…wish those lips spent half as much time around cock or against my arse as they do my Mahal-damned ears.


End file.
